Rachel Langford
Biographic Data
| ID | 3935912 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rachel Langford |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rachel |
| FAMILY NAME | Langford |
| SIGNATURE | LANGFORD R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Toronto Metropolitan University |
| ORCID | 0009-0006-3814-2807 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
‘So, your words weren’t twisted were they?’: Formulations in a restorative justice meeting
Formulations, one type of talk about talk, arise in restorative justice meetings just as they do in other discursive domains. They represent explicit references to things said previously and can perform several functions. Our study of formulations in a restorative meeting between probation staff and an offender identified five such functions: communicating active listening, promoting affiliative talk, changing the offender's way of thinking, prai…
Questions and control in victim–offender meetings
In some restorative justice schemes, facilitators have been found to control discussions and outcomes, influence the participation rights of offenders and victims and coax offenders into explanations of accountability. This study used audio-recordings of four restorative justice meetings that were transcribed and examined using the method of conversation analysis. I examined the questions asked by the facilitator, focusing on the role of epistemi…
Reconceptualizing Activism through a Feminist Care Ethics in the Ontario (Canada) Early Childhood Education Context: Enacting Caring Activism
While early childhood education (ECE) in Ontario has always had a vibrant social activist community, it is characterized by tensions within and between individuals and institutions at the minor (childcare centres, post-secondary ECE programs) and major (mainstream media, public policy) levels. ECE activism is further complicated by the fact that it often feels impossible/unsustainable within our existing patriarchal, neoliberal political structur…
Care -full pedagogy: Conceptualizing feminist care ethics as an overarching critical framework to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism within post-secondary early childhood education programs
This article offers a theoretical provocation through conceptualizing a pedagogy of care as a means of caring with students and each other to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism in Canadian post-secondary early childhood education programs. The authors’ conceptualization of care -full as pedagogy is rooted in the premises that education is always ethical and political, and caring about, for and with others is necessary to establish equita…
Critiquing Ontario’s Childcare Policy Responses to the Inextricably Connected Needs of Mothers, Children, and Early Childhood Educators
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the chronically inadequate childcare infrastructure in Canada and across much of the world. Government responses have been many and varied within and between countries, provinces, municipalities, and local communities. Embracing a feminist ethics of care lens, this paper examines how the needs of mothers, children, and early childhood educators were recognized as interconnected (or not) in Ontario’s childcare pol…
Navigating Reconceptualist and Feminist Ethics of Care Scholarship to Find a Conceptual Space for Rethinking Children’s Needs in Early Childhood Education
The aim of this article is to navigate through differing perspectives on the concept of children’s needs in early childhood education. Reconceptualist scholars critique the developmental narrative of the needy and dependent child. In contrast, feminist ethics of care scholars regard having needs and dependencies as ontologically what it means to be human. The article proposes a potential in-between space that recognizes that children have needs a…
Ethics of Care in Practice: An Observational Study of Interactions and Power Relations between Children and Educators in Urban Ontario Early Childhood Settings
This article explores observations of care practices in interactions between early childhood educators and children in two urban early childhood settings in Ontario. Analysis of these care practices is informed by a feminist ethics of care. Findings show that the care actions of educators were more often instrumental in nature, often incomplete, and/ or interrupted. Children’s experience with and perspectives on their care were not taken into con…
Who cares for carers? How discursive constructions of care work marginalized early childhood educators in Ontario’s 2018 provincial election
In the Canadian province of Ontario, the early childhood education and care workforce continues to be undervalued, underpaid and burdened with challenging working conditions. Drawing on Fairclough and Lazar, this study employed a feminist critical discourse analysis to explore the discourses of care work present in the 2018 childcare platforms of three major parties: the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservative Par…
Imagining a caring early childhood education and care system in Canada: A thought experiment
Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada
Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarc…
The innovation of Ontario full-day kindergarten educator teams: Have they reproduced the split systems of care and education
This study investigated the implementation of a full-day kindergarten programme in Ontario, Canada. Key to the implementation of this programme has been a new kind of educator team consisting of a certified teacher and a registered early childhood educator and a complementary partnership in which each team member contributes equally. Our research examined team members’ perceptions and practices related to their roles and responsibilities. Finding…
A Shifting Collective Identity: A critical discourse analysis of the child care advocacy association of Canada's public messaging in 2005 and 2008
Faring poorly by international standards, out-of-home childcare in Canada is often described as ‘in crisis’. This study addresses how national childcare movement actors, who are overwhelmingly women, have discursively constructed their collective identity during two contrasting political climates. Data comprise publically available media releases produced in 2005 and 2008 by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC), a national grassr…
Theorizing an Early Childhood Educator’s Authority for the Advancement of Social Goods
Authority is an uncomfortable subject for early childhood educators. This article outlines some tensions between the theory and practice of an early childhood educator’s authority and the implications of these tensions for educators themselves and the social changes they envisage. Drawing on a range of feminist educational philosophers and critical pedagogy theorists, critiques of both traditional authority and a rejection of authority are examin…
Reconceptualizing Activism through a Feminist Care Ethics in the Ontario (Canada) Early Childhood Education Context: Enacting Caring Activism
While early childhood education (ECE) in Ontario has always had a vibrant social activist community, it is characterized by tensions within and between individuals and institutions at the minor (childcare centres, post-secondary ECE programs) and major (mainstream media, public policy) levels. ECE activism is further complicated by the fact that it often feels impossible/unsustainable within our existing patriarchal, neoliberal political structur…
Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada
Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarc…
Theorizing an Early Childhood Educator’s Authority for the Advancement of Social Goods
Authority is an uncomfortable subject for early childhood educators. This article outlines some tensions between the theory and practice of an early childhood educator’s authority and the implications of these tensions for educators themselves and the social changes they envisage. Drawing on a range of feminist educational philosophers and critical pedagogy theorists, critiques of both traditional authority and a rejection of authority are examin…
A Shifting Collective Identity: A critical discourse analysis of the child care advocacy association of Canada's public messaging in 2005 and 2008
Faring poorly by international standards, out-of-home childcare in Canada is often described as ‘in crisis’. This study addresses how national childcare movement actors, who are overwhelmingly women, have discursively constructed their collective identity during two contrasting political climates. Data comprise publically available media releases produced in 2005 and 2008 by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC), a national grassr…
The innovation of Ontario full-day kindergarten educator teams: Have they reproduced the split systems of care and education
This study investigated the implementation of a full-day kindergarten programme in Ontario, Canada. Key to the implementation of this programme has been a new kind of educator team consisting of a certified teacher and a registered early childhood educator and a complementary partnership in which each team member contributes equally. Our research examined team members’ perceptions and practices related to their roles and responsibilities. Finding…
Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada
Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarc…
Imagining a caring early childhood education and care system in Canada: A thought experiment
Navigating Reconceptualist and Feminist Ethics of Care Scholarship to Find a Conceptual Space for Rethinking Children’s Needs in Early Childhood Education
The aim of this article is to navigate through differing perspectives on the concept of children’s needs in early childhood education. Reconceptualist scholars critique the developmental narrative of the needy and dependent child. In contrast, feminist ethics of care scholars regard having needs and dependencies as ontologically what it means to be human. The article proposes a potential in-between space that recognizes that children have needs a…
Ethics of Care in Practice: An Observational Study of Interactions and Power Relations between Children and Educators in Urban Ontario Early Childhood Settings
This article explores observations of care practices in interactions between early childhood educators and children in two urban early childhood settings in Ontario. Analysis of these care practices is informed by a feminist ethics of care. Findings show that the care actions of educators were more often instrumental in nature, often incomplete, and/ or interrupted. Children’s experience with and perspectives on their care were not taken into con…
Who cares for carers? How discursive constructions of care work marginalized early childhood educators in Ontario’s 2018 provincial election
In the Canadian province of Ontario, the early childhood education and care workforce continues to be undervalued, underpaid and burdened with challenging working conditions. Drawing on Fairclough and Lazar, this study employed a feminist critical discourse analysis to explore the discourses of care work present in the 2018 childcare platforms of three major parties: the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservative Par…
Critiquing Ontario’s Childcare Policy Responses to the Inextricably Connected Needs of Mothers, Children, and Early Childhood Educators
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the chronically inadequate childcare infrastructure in Canada and across much of the world. Government responses have been many and varied within and between countries, provinces, municipalities, and local communities. Embracing a feminist ethics of care lens, this paper examines how the needs of mothers, children, and early childhood educators were recognized as interconnected (or not) in Ontario’s childcare pol…
Care -full pedagogy: Conceptualizing feminist care ethics as an overarching critical framework to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism within post-secondary early childhood education programs
This article offers a theoretical provocation through conceptualizing a pedagogy of care as a means of caring with students and each other to interrupt the dominance of developmentalism in Canadian post-secondary early childhood education programs. The authors’ conceptualization of care -full as pedagogy is rooted in the premises that education is always ethical and political, and caring about, for and with others is necessary to establish equita…
Reconceptualizing Activism through a Feminist Care Ethics in the Ontario (Canada) Early Childhood Education Context: Enacting Caring Activism
While early childhood education (ECE) in Ontario has always had a vibrant social activist community, it is characterized by tensions within and between individuals and institutions at the minor (childcare centres, post-secondary ECE programs) and major (mainstream media, public policy) levels. ECE activism is further complicated by the fact that it often feels impossible/unsustainable within our existing patriarchal, neoliberal political structur…
‘So, your words weren’t twisted were they?’: Formulations in a restorative justice meeting
Formulations, one type of talk about talk, arise in restorative justice meetings just as they do in other discursive domains. They represent explicit references to things said previously and can perform several functions. Our study of formulations in a restorative meeting between probation staff and an offender identified five such functions: communicating active listening, promoting affiliative talk, changing the offender's way of thinking, prai…
Questions and control in victim–offender meetings
In some restorative justice schemes, facilitators have been found to control discussions and outcomes, influence the participation rights of offenders and victims and coax offenders into explanations of accountability. This study used audio-recordings of four restorative justice meetings that were transcribed and examined using the method of conversation analysis. I examined the questions asked by the facilitator, focusing on the role of epistemi…
Psychology (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Developmental psychology (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Early childhood (8 works) · Early childhood education (7 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Children's Rights and Participation (5 works)